Tag Archives: muses

If you couldn’t tell from my lack of posts, we pretty much steered clear of the Mardi Gras festivities until right before the big day.

It was kind of nice – our street was like a ghost town, too far away from a parade to provide parking. No loud base from our neighbors, no one taking our parking spots…overall it was quiet but nice.

Joan Jett at aMUSEment, 2012

But the weekend of Mardi Gras, my friend Stacey joined us once again and we hit the town. We started off with Muses and the aMUSEment party on Thursday. Joan Jett was amazing and the best entertainment yet.

On Friday, we headed to Avenue Pub to watch the parades. We watched there last year and it turned out well – this year was even better. We caught so many coveted light-up throws that we could barely carry them all home. The only downside is that we pretty much missed the biggest parade, Morpheus, but the parades were so behind schedule. We left at 11 p.m. and the Morpheus parade had just begun. For those of you who don’t know, it lasts well over an hour and we had been out since 5 p.m. screaming our heads off.

It rained and was gross all day on Saturday, but we headed to Rose Nails for a really nice and relaxing mani/pedi – after trying a few places on Maple Street that charged three times as much. We headed to Bourbon that night with some family.

On Sunday we headed to the French Market and had poboys with an excellent view on a Quarter balcony. Great way to wrap up the weekend.

We thought about going to the parades on Fat Tuesday, but after five straight years of Mardi Gras I was a little sick of parades. Maybe next year.

Mardi Gras is officially upon us here in the Big Easy. The first parade was last weekend (Krewe du Vieux) and the Muses had their float viewing party on Sunday.

We headed to Avenue Pub on Saturday instead of the parade because it looked like rain, and the last place in New Orleans you want to be when it’s raining is the French Quarter. I glittered some shoes yesterday for a friend riding in Muses and somehow managed to also edit the paper last night.

This weekend we may head to some Metairie parades, which I tend to like because they’re a lot more laid-back than parades in town. There is no pushing or waiting hours in advance for these week-before-MG parades. I usually get to the Clearview Mall about 40 minutes before the parades, waltz right out onto Veterans Memorial and have about 100 feet of roadside to myself. It’s a good warm up for the following weekend.

Bourbon Street during Mardi Gras 2011

Stacey will be coming in town again for the big parades in two weeks – Muses, Orpheus, Bacchus, etc. and for the aMUSEment party where Joan Jett will be performing next Thursday! I cannot wait to see her live; I really think she’s the perfect girl-power performer for the party. But my biggest point of interest in the coming weeks is that WILL FERRELL will be reigning over the Bacchus parade. I have waited a long time to see him – maybe I’ll get my chance next week.

And for once, I’m way ahead of the game for Valentine’s Day next week. I got Wesley something very sentimental and something very practical – they balance each other out I think.

Last night was Twelfth Night, a.k.a. Kings Day, a.k.a. the official start of the Mardi Gras season in New Orleans.

Wesley and I headed to the Eiffel Society for the Muses party and watched the Phunny Phorty Phellows ride by on the streetcar. The great thing about watching the PPP with the Muses is that they riders went all-out and actually got off of the car to greet people.

At the party, we had the good – or bad – food experience of trying sausage wrapped in bacon for the first time. It tasted good, but I could feel my arteries clogging after one bite. We also got to have our first bites of King Cake for the season.

I can’t wait for this year’s Mardi Gras line-up; it includes Will Ferrell (my absolute favorite) as the Grand Marshall for Bacchus and Joan Jett headlining at the aMUSEment party! If I get a glimpse of Will Ferrell it will make up for me being the only person in Nola who has never spotted a celebrity in town.

The parades kick off in February with Krewe du Vieux – a personal favorite for me and Wesley. This year’s theme is “Crimes Against Nature” – last year it was a bunch of penises parading down Bourbon, so I can only imagine what this year’s outfits will be.

The same weekend, Muses will have their bead distribution and float viewing party. I can’t wait to get all of the swag I ordered last year and viewing the floats is one of my favorite parts of being a member.

Back in Uptown…

Today we took our bikes in to the shop on Oak Street – finally – and learned that they will be pretty easy and cheap to fix. The guy there was super nice, hopefully this experience is better than our bike-buying experience at Wally World. We also headed to Patisserie for lunch and had some really excellent sandwiches – I really cannot recommend them enough.

This was what the krewe calls “Muses Big Weekend.” We had bead distribution on Saturday and today we had our big float-viewing party.

I bought a lot of great throws from the Muses this year to share with family and friends. I also got a great Muses necklace! And the day really felt like a Mardi Gras kick-off thanks to the Krewe du Vieux parade in the Quarter.

Krewe du Vieux

I don’t know what was going on with the streetcar yesterday, but RTA really F’ed up. There were hundreds of people waiting for the trolley when we got to the stop about 45 minutes before the parade. The streetcar finally came about 15 minutes after the parade was scheduled to stop. We did make it to the parade, but then on the way home we took a taxi after waiting 25 minutes and there not being a streetcar in sight. We didn’t see one going down the line on St. Charles towards the Quarter until we were almost to Carrollton. Something just was not right.

Anyway, the parade had a lot of high-energy people and OK throws. Since we got there late and didn’t get in the front, we only got a couple of beads. But it was fun to just see the anti-Palin, anti-“Tea Party” floats go down the road.

Iconic Muses shoe float

Today Wesley and I headed to the West Bank Mardi Gras World for the Muses float-viewing party where the krewe debuts all of this year’s floats and some free food and drinks. The floats were super-awesome and really edgy this year so get excited – only 11 days left to wait!

A Muses shoe I decorated

After the party, I headed to a friend’s house for my first Muses shoe-decorating party. I loved the shoes I made and really, really hope I catch some in the parade! I already bought the ingredients for two excellent Muses signs for me and Stacey to hold during the parade.

One year ago today, I sat down and started this blog about the adventure I was beginning by moving to New Orleans with my boyfriend after graduating college.

On June 6, 2009, I had just earned my journalism degree and had a part-time job as a newsroom clerk (ie. mail distributor, newspaper archiver and one-story-a-week writer). I was casually looking for a job in New Orleans and majorly dreaming about coming-up escapades in Europe. And I lived with my best girlfriend in a wonderful apartment in a city full of my friends and fellow Gators fans.

Now, 95 posts and one year later, I finally have a full-time job as an editor after months of searching, hundreds (literally) of applications and three months of hell working at a restaurant in the Quarter. I’m dreaming of ever having enough money to pay my bills for the month and about my trip to Albuquerque in October to see my best friend and ex-roommate for only the third time since I’ve moved here.

[ It’s really something (awful) to go from living with your best friend to seeing them only twice a year. I can’t imagine how Kitten feels – my best friend also had a cat who lived with us for a year and grew up with Kitten. ]

Back then, I was thinking about joining a Mardi Gras Krewe to make friends in New Orleans, now I’m a Muse and I met most of my friends in town at the krewe gatherings.

A year ago, I said that Pensacola Beach was the whitest, most beautiful beach in the world. Now it’s being covered by oil.

It’s been a surprising, shocking, awful, amazing year and I’m glad that I have this blog to look back at this huge transition in my life and my first impressions of life after college in the Big Easy.

First off, seven people got shot blocks away from where I was walking with some of my family in the French Quarter on Saturday night. It must have happened just after we left and we literally walked right over where it would happen just about an hour later.

Second, a chemical leak happened at a plant in Norco and I was sent to take some breaking news pictures. Also, a fire happened at this nature preserve. Both of these happened the day before the paper went out, so we had to change everything around and write new stories. Super fun. But seriously, it was pretty exciting.

Finally, today I got a little break by going to the Muses‘ Thirsty Thursday at this bar called the Rendon Inn in the Uptown/Midtown area. It was kind of small but very clean and the owner was extremely nice. I didn’t win any of the raffles, but who was I kidding thinking I would actually win something with my bad luck?

Reading about that really got me thinking about how much I love historical mysteries, like Roanoke, such as the Shroud of Turin, Easter Island, that book that predicted the Titanic, etc. My friend showed me this site called Unsolved Mysteries (I’m not sure if it’s the same as the tv show) that has a pretty decent collection of information on them. And I’m not sure if the Donner Party is so much an unsolved mystery since there were survivors, but I just read an article stating that they may not have become cannibals after all.

If anyone knows other interesting “unsolved mysteries” please comment! I know there are a bunch but I just can’t remember them.